I did not zoom in enough with the canon. I was my mistake, I forgot I was not shooting a prime, since I was busy with them the other day. That accounts for the angle and different fstop. The canon was set to f5.6, the pentax was set for the widest aperture at each zoom range which was f4

Noise is noise. And both these cameras actually do a decent job at higher iso's. But for someone that is considering these 2 camera for low light shoot. It gives a very good example what kind of results one can expect with the kit lenses.

There is really no perfect way to compare most dslr as each make has different resolution, nikon at 12.3, canon at 15.1 and 18, sony at 12 and 14.3, pentax at 12.4. You will get close with some camera's but it will never be exact like back in the film days. You control resolution with a baseline film. But my take is that for the members considering high iso camera like the pentax and canon. They are very close in performance. And either would actually work for my low light work I do allot. It really all comes down to ergo and taste.

I agree. But the 15MP T1i creates 4752 x 3168 pixel images while the 12.4MP Pentax K-x creates 4288x2848 pixel images. That means the T1i has about 11% greater resolution, and even if it had 11% more errant pixels, each pixel would have less imapct on the final image. If you took an 800x600 crop of an image from a K-x, you'd need to take an 887x665 crop from the T1i's image, and reduce it to 800x600, in order to make a fair comparison. But even at that, because of the difference in the sizes of the image sensors, the crop from the T1i should be 838x628, then reduced to 800x600. Of course, the process of reducing the images would hide noise, but so would the JPEG image compression that occurs with each step in the proccess.

Interesting results, thanks for posting. I think the Pentax outperformed the Canon on most shots but more so on the very first three shots. The bridge lights look very purple on the Canon shots and the Pentax high ISO (12800) is significantly cleaner.

The pentax handles the noise a bit better then the canon. But I notice the lights on the pentax are a bit green. Also I had the canon on landscape, and the pentax was set on vivid with shadow correction and D-Range on. So the pentax had an advantage on the first 3 shots with these setting on.

In general i think in all Pentax colours a bit green comes in...
On the other side the first photos of Canon, a bit pink comes in...

However the bridge by the side photo taken by Canon is superb.. Which one of the side photos of the bridge is closer to reality? The pentax which is not so bright or the Canon which brings up bright wonderful colours?

Thanks for having this post and thanks for answering my first post too. It helps a lot. After reading your reply and reading this post, I am more toward the Canon T1i or T2i. But as a beginner, I think T1i would be better. I didn't really see your own review about these pictures. Can you kind of give us your opinion about these pictures, which one you like better, and your experience when shooting these cameras? Do you have more pictures on the web?

I like both camera to be honest, the t1i has more noise or grain at the high iso. But the T1i does retain a bit more detail then the k-x. Part of that could be the slightly higher resolution of the canon sensor.

The pentax seems to under expose by 1/3 and the canon over expose by 1/3. But both are workable and has their pros and cons. And these are very very easy work arounds with a dslr.

But the big thing if I were to pick one of these 2 cameras would be the availability of prime lenses. I shoot fix focus lenses allot with big apertures. And the canon has the edge in this department.

But since my brother needs just some low light, but zoom in the bigger concern. The K-x in kit form was a better option then the canon's kit lenses.

Sorry, I do not have more photos. I just posted the low light photos on Steve's to give members so real world samples of what these cameras can do.